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Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures
This collection of writings by Mark Fisher, author of the acclaimed Capitalist Realism, argues that we are haunted by futures that failed to happen. Fisher searches for the traces of these lost futures in the work of David Peace, John Le Carré, Christopher Nolan, Joy Division, Burial and many others.
232 pages, Paperback
First published May 30, 2014
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About the author
Mark Fisher
106 books2,065 followersMark Fisher (1968 – 2017) was a co-founder of Zero Books and Repeater Books. His blog, k-punk, defined critical writing for a generation. He wrote three books, Capitalist Realism, Ghosts of My Life and The Weird and the Eerie, and was a Visiting Fellow in the Visual Cultures department at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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August 7, 2025
Despite the fact that I spend a lot of my free time reading, I'm not the sort of person who goes around saying books have 'changed my life'. I struggle to see how even the most brilliant and memorable books I've read have actually changed me. But Ghosts of My Life might truly deserve that epithet. It is essentially a collection of essays about music, TV, film and novels, but it feels like something much bigger and more significant is shifting beneath its skin. This book has introduced me to entirely new ways of looking at and thinking about pop culture. It's a reading of the world through the lens of pop culture.
The interview with electronic musician Burial is extraordinary. If it'd been part of a novel I'd have found it unrealistic; I'd have thought no real interview could ever be that insightful, that revealing. Partway through the book I found myself struck by the destabilising thought that perhaps it was a novel, and the apparently non-fictitious nature of the book was somehow a very elaborate ruse. It is non-fiction, but the fact that I even entertained that thought shows how powerful it is as a narrative. The essays hang together remarkably well, given the disparity of their subjects.
The other day, after watching a really good film, I was thinking about this feeling I get when I'm watching or reading something I am beginning to realise I love (usually after going into it with low/vague expectations). It's a feeling of gradual escalating elation, a slow build of euphoria, joy gathering speed. Ghosts of My Life made me feel that. It made me feel like neglected synapses were suddenly ablaze.
---
Some lines and passages I noted down:
Those who can't remember the past are condemned to have it resold to them forever.
Haunting... can be construed as a failed mourning. It is about refusing to give up the ghost or – and this can sometimes amount to the same thing – the refusal of the ghost to give up on us.
The family is a haunted structure, an Overlook Hotel full of presentiments and uncanny repetitions, something that speaks ahead of us, instead of us...
What we have lost, it can often seem, is the very possibility of loss.
Lots of good stuff in the essay about Joy Division:
Because Joy Division's bleakness was without any specific cause, they crossed the line from the blue of sadness into the black of depression, passing into the 'desert and wastelands' where nothing brings either joy or sorrow. Zero affect. (These lines, both content and rhythm, made me realise how much Ghosts of My Life reminded me of Joel Lane's writing.)
... the ultimate horror, the life-Will paradoxically assuming all the loathsome properties of the undead (whatever you do, you can't extinguish it, it keeps coming back).
What did they [Joy Division] see there? Only what all depressives, all mystics, always see: the obscene undead twitching of the Will as it seeks to maintain the illusion that this object, the one it is fixated upon NOW, this one, will satisfy it...
[Joy Division] knew that satiation wasn't succeeded by tristesse, it was itself, immediately, tristesse. Satiation is the point at which you must face the existential revelation that you didn't really want what you seemed so desparate to have, that your most urgent desires are only a filthy vitalist trick to keep the show on the road.
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The interview with electronic musician Burial is extraordinary. If it'd been part of a novel I'd have found it unrealistic; I'd have thought no real interview could ever be that insightful, that revealing. Partway through the book I found myself struck by the destabilising thought that perhaps it was a novel, and the apparently non-fictitious nature of the book was somehow a very elaborate ruse. It is non-fiction, but the fact that I even entertained that thought shows how powerful it is as a narrative. The essays hang together remarkably well, given the disparity of their subjects.
The other day, after watching a really good film, I was thinking about this feeling I get when I'm watching or reading something I am beginning to realise I love (usually after going into it with low/vague expectations). It's a feeling of gradual escalating elation, a slow build of euphoria, joy gathering speed. Ghosts of My Life made me feel that. It made me feel like neglected synapses were suddenly ablaze.
---
Some lines and passages I noted down:
Those who can't remember the past are condemned to have it resold to them forever.
Haunting... can be construed as a failed mourning. It is about refusing to give up the ghost or – and this can sometimes amount to the same thing – the refusal of the ghost to give up on us.
The family is a haunted structure, an Overlook Hotel full of presentiments and uncanny repetitions, something that speaks ahead of us, instead of us...
What we have lost, it can often seem, is the very possibility of loss.
Lots of good stuff in the essay about Joy Division:
Because Joy Division's bleakness was without any specific cause, they crossed the line from the blue of sadness into the black of depression, passing into the 'desert and wastelands' where nothing brings either joy or sorrow. Zero affect. (These lines, both content and rhythm, made me realise how much Ghosts of My Life reminded me of Joel Lane's writing.)
... the ultimate horror, the life-Will paradoxically assuming all the loathsome properties of the undead (whatever you do, you can't extinguish it, it keeps coming back).
What did they [Joy Division] see there? Only what all depressives, all mystics, always see: the obscene undead twitching of the Will as it seeks to maintain the illusion that this object, the one it is fixated upon NOW, this one, will satisfy it...
[Joy Division] knew that satiation wasn't succeeded by tristesse, it was itself, immediately, tristesse. Satiation is the point at which you must face the existential revelation that you didn't really want what you seemed so desparate to have, that your most urgent desires are only a filthy vitalist trick to keep the show on the road.
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
May 14, 2020
I can’t prove it, but I believe there’s a bit of a cult of personality surrounding thinker/critic/philosopher Mark Fisher. It’s easy to see why. His work The Weird and the Eerie, for example, is must-read material for readers of dark fiction and horror, as clear an explication of the distinction between the weird and the eerie in several media as you will ever read. I also strongly recommend watching his lecture on The Slow Cancellation of the Future, wherein Fisher elaborates on the book currently under review – specifically the first essay in the book.
“The Slow Cancellation of the future” diverges from the lecture, as you would expect. One difference is his concentration on the British TV show Sapphire & Steel . I was in the UK just a bit too late to see that show, so I you-tubed (is that a verb now?) the last episode. Frankly, it was a bit shocking, and I see why he examines it so closely. It is a symbol of being trapped in time, which is the central focus of the essay: We are trapped in time – the future has been cancelled.
I hit chronological adulthood in 1987. This is just when Fisher argues the future was in the middle of being cancelled. I can actually see what he means. I was a first-hand witness to exactly what he was talking about. In short: Take any music from the current decade and project it into the past, say, into the early 2000s. People in the early 2000s hearing todays music would not bat an eye at it. It’s no different, really. Whereas, if one took music from the early 2000s and pushed it back to the ‘80s, there would be many eyebrows raised. Amortize this dynamic over movies and television, and you can see where this is leading – innovation stalled, and this stall began during my childhood. This theme carries on through several of the other essays in the first third of Ghosts of My Life.
Unfortunately, few of the other essays in this first section even approach the tightness of Fisher’s initial manifesto. At times, the impetus of his argument is stretched to near breaking, as when he claims that society has lost confidence that there can be any kind of future at all, in his essay “The Past is an Alien Planet”.
If you’re into really obscure music, this book is for you, as well. I was introduced to a few new musicians that I was not familiar with, but one of my favorite pairs of essays was about The Caretaker, who I know well.
"Sleevenotes for the Caretaker's Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia" was exactly the sort of essay I was hoping for from this volume. It helps that I own two Caretaker albums. This playful essay declares in perfect terms the displacement, both in location and time, encountered when one listens to the album. This is a key hauntological essay that, along with the interview with The Caretaker, which follows, strikes at the heart of the matter:
. . . the kind of nostalgia that is now so pervasive may best be characterised not as a longing for the past so much as an inability to make new memories. Fredric Jameson described one of the impasses of postmodern culture as the inability 'to focus our own present, as though we have become incapable of achieving aesthetic representations of our own current experience.
"Home is Where the Haunt is: The Shining's Hauntology" is a fabulous essay that jabs and pokes, but never fully lays out the hauntological corners of The Shining (both the novel and the film). It reaches out from around corners and taps the shoulder, then disappears. It is heard as distant moans and seen only in flashes of white. It's a fabulous essay, haunting in and of itself. Fisher in top form!
Unfortunately, not all of the essays are of this quality. “Hauntological Blues: Little Axe” felt like Fisher reaching for straws in asserting that Little Axe was something much more than a (admittedly fantastic) blues outfit. It’s a hollow attempt to assert meaning where there is none, of laying a hauntological template over the band's music simply because Fisher likes it. Truth be told, I like it, too. But it's not hauntological. It's the blues, plain and simple. This imposition of symbolism, meaning, and the theme of hauntology where it doesn’t seem to belong is also evident in "Old Sunlight from Other Times and Other Lives: John Foxx's Tiny Colour Movies," though the interview with Foxx that follows is excellent because Fisher lets Foxx carry the microphone to speak for himself and his work with his own voice.
At other times, the artist is self-aware of the hauntological nature of their work. It is intentional and insightful. Such is the case in "Nostalgia for Modernism: The Focus Group and Belbury Poly’" an insightful analysis into the Ghost Box record label, one of my personal favorites. Of interest, among other things, is the idea that much of this music points us not toward pop culture of the past, but to hints of incidental TV music or library slideshow presentations. The sort of thing that is woven into the background weft of life. It is the trivial that evokes the feeling of an era, in these cases. Or, more specifically, it is the promise for the future (that never came) which speaks in the voice of the Zeitgeist of the past-looking-forward to the future.
It's those things lurking at the background of attention, things that we took for granted at the time, which now evoke the past most powerfully.
The last section of the book, “The Stain of Place,” seemed the “loosest” of the three sections. I found myself yearning, throughout, for past places. As a child, I lived over half of my life overseas. I’ve seen a lot of the world, not as a tourist, but as a person living in foreign lands. And, as a curious child, I found myself often in those oddball nooks and crannies that are never seen by the casual tourist – back-alleys, abandoned lots, unkempt ruins, wastewater gullies, abandoned factories, and half-finished construction zones. I had a knack for finding that sort of place as a kid. I never went to the Tower of London or Madame Tussauds when I lived north of London, but I watched bums roll each other in dirty alleys near Carnaby Street (now, sadly, gentrified) and was propositioned by hookers off urine-drenched back doors in Soho.
So reading Fisher’s essay on Laura Oldfield Ford’s Savage Messiah, with its references to liminal spaces, was highly intriguing to me. And while the essay “Nomadalgia: The Junior Boys’ So This is Goodbye” took fully 2/3rds of the essay to get started, the last 1/3, about the nostalgia felt specifically by frequent travelers, was relatable.
I really liked how the essay "Grey Area: Chris Petit's Content" celebrates the banal in the English landscape. I love the beauty of the Cotswolds, but there is some blase beauty in the flats of East Anglia (I lived on the western edge of this area when I lived in England). I am reminded of the wonderful collection Est: Collected Reports from East Anglia, and that is a thoroughly good thing.
Speaking of books about place, I have The Rings of Saturn on my bookshelf, waiting to be read when my yearning to get back to England will inevitably crash into my inability to get back there. I worry that Fisher's self-avowed skepticism of Sebald's work might subconsciously cause me to put my guard up, rather than taking in the book as it is. This is the danger of reading critical essays, I suppose.
In a change of p(l)ace, Fisher, in "The Lost Consciousness: Christopher Nolan's Inception" points out what the movie Inception might have been. I found it interesting that one of Nolan's main themes is "the lies that we tell ourselves to stay happy". After just watching The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, I am really struck by this theme and its utility as a way to critique film, literature, and art. But, honestly, what’s this essay doing in a section about place?
At first, I was a bit taken aback by Fisher's assessment of Inception as a fairly banal film, but after watching him break it down and thinking about it myself, I'm convinced that he's right. The film could have been so much more . . . dreamlike, but it wasn't. It's like a "Starbucks" idea of dream, more shoot-em-up than oneiric and, therefore, quite disappointing when analyzed closely.
I can’t end this essay without mentioning the elephant in the room: Mark Fisher’s suicide in 2017. There are threads of depression throughout the work – it’s right there in the subtitle. One can see hints, perhaps warning signs, that Fisher’s depression was intractable. But the final essay, while openly acknowledging the damage done by privatization, the abandonment of public assistance, etc., is, in the end, downright hopeful. I never thought I'd say this, but Fisher's “”Tremors of an Imperceptible Future” is far too optimistic in its hope that the 2008 financial crisis might have turned our attitudes toward capital and climate change around. Not. A. Chance. I wonder if the loss of this hope was part of what drove him to suicide. It has to be more complicated than that, but I wonder if it was a contributing factor. We will never know.
“The Slow Cancellation of the future” diverges from the lecture, as you would expect. One difference is his concentration on the British TV show Sapphire & Steel . I was in the UK just a bit too late to see that show, so I you-tubed (is that a verb now?) the last episode. Frankly, it was a bit shocking, and I see why he examines it so closely. It is a symbol of being trapped in time, which is the central focus of the essay: We are trapped in time – the future has been cancelled.
I hit chronological adulthood in 1987. This is just when Fisher argues the future was in the middle of being cancelled. I can actually see what he means. I was a first-hand witness to exactly what he was talking about. In short: Take any music from the current decade and project it into the past, say, into the early 2000s. People in the early 2000s hearing todays music would not bat an eye at it. It’s no different, really. Whereas, if one took music from the early 2000s and pushed it back to the ‘80s, there would be many eyebrows raised. Amortize this dynamic over movies and television, and you can see where this is leading – innovation stalled, and this stall began during my childhood. This theme carries on through several of the other essays in the first third of Ghosts of My Life.
Unfortunately, few of the other essays in this first section even approach the tightness of Fisher’s initial manifesto. At times, the impetus of his argument is stretched to near breaking, as when he claims that society has lost confidence that there can be any kind of future at all, in his essay “The Past is an Alien Planet”.
If you’re into really obscure music, this book is for you, as well. I was introduced to a few new musicians that I was not familiar with, but one of my favorite pairs of essays was about The Caretaker, who I know well.
"Sleevenotes for the Caretaker's Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia" was exactly the sort of essay I was hoping for from this volume. It helps that I own two Caretaker albums. This playful essay declares in perfect terms the displacement, both in location and time, encountered when one listens to the album. This is a key hauntological essay that, along with the interview with The Caretaker, which follows, strikes at the heart of the matter:
. . . the kind of nostalgia that is now so pervasive may best be characterised not as a longing for the past so much as an inability to make new memories. Fredric Jameson described one of the impasses of postmodern culture as the inability 'to focus our own present, as though we have become incapable of achieving aesthetic representations of our own current experience.
"Home is Where the Haunt is: The Shining's Hauntology" is a fabulous essay that jabs and pokes, but never fully lays out the hauntological corners of The Shining (both the novel and the film). It reaches out from around corners and taps the shoulder, then disappears. It is heard as distant moans and seen only in flashes of white. It's a fabulous essay, haunting in and of itself. Fisher in top form!
Unfortunately, not all of the essays are of this quality. “Hauntological Blues: Little Axe” felt like Fisher reaching for straws in asserting that Little Axe was something much more than a (admittedly fantastic) blues outfit. It’s a hollow attempt to assert meaning where there is none, of laying a hauntological template over the band's music simply because Fisher likes it. Truth be told, I like it, too. But it's not hauntological. It's the blues, plain and simple. This imposition of symbolism, meaning, and the theme of hauntology where it doesn’t seem to belong is also evident in "Old Sunlight from Other Times and Other Lives: John Foxx's Tiny Colour Movies," though the interview with Foxx that follows is excellent because Fisher lets Foxx carry the microphone to speak for himself and his work with his own voice.
At other times, the artist is self-aware of the hauntological nature of their work. It is intentional and insightful. Such is the case in "Nostalgia for Modernism: The Focus Group and Belbury Poly’" an insightful analysis into the Ghost Box record label, one of my personal favorites. Of interest, among other things, is the idea that much of this music points us not toward pop culture of the past, but to hints of incidental TV music or library slideshow presentations. The sort of thing that is woven into the background weft of life. It is the trivial that evokes the feeling of an era, in these cases. Or, more specifically, it is the promise for the future (that never came) which speaks in the voice of the Zeitgeist of the past-looking-forward to the future.
It's those things lurking at the background of attention, things that we took for granted at the time, which now evoke the past most powerfully.
The last section of the book, “The Stain of Place,” seemed the “loosest” of the three sections. I found myself yearning, throughout, for past places. As a child, I lived over half of my life overseas. I’ve seen a lot of the world, not as a tourist, but as a person living in foreign lands. And, as a curious child, I found myself often in those oddball nooks and crannies that are never seen by the casual tourist – back-alleys, abandoned lots, unkempt ruins, wastewater gullies, abandoned factories, and half-finished construction zones. I had a knack for finding that sort of place as a kid. I never went to the Tower of London or Madame Tussauds when I lived north of London, but I watched bums roll each other in dirty alleys near Carnaby Street (now, sadly, gentrified) and was propositioned by hookers off urine-drenched back doors in Soho.
So reading Fisher’s essay on Laura Oldfield Ford’s Savage Messiah, with its references to liminal spaces, was highly intriguing to me. And while the essay “Nomadalgia: The Junior Boys’ So This is Goodbye” took fully 2/3rds of the essay to get started, the last 1/3, about the nostalgia felt specifically by frequent travelers, was relatable.
I really liked how the essay "Grey Area: Chris Petit's Content" celebrates the banal in the English landscape. I love the beauty of the Cotswolds, but there is some blase beauty in the flats of East Anglia (I lived on the western edge of this area when I lived in England). I am reminded of the wonderful collection Est: Collected Reports from East Anglia, and that is a thoroughly good thing.
Speaking of books about place, I have The Rings of Saturn on my bookshelf, waiting to be read when my yearning to get back to England will inevitably crash into my inability to get back there. I worry that Fisher's self-avowed skepticism of Sebald's work might subconsciously cause me to put my guard up, rather than taking in the book as it is. This is the danger of reading critical essays, I suppose.
In a change of p(l)ace, Fisher, in "The Lost Consciousness: Christopher Nolan's Inception" points out what the movie Inception might have been. I found it interesting that one of Nolan's main themes is "the lies that we tell ourselves to stay happy". After just watching The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, I am really struck by this theme and its utility as a way to critique film, literature, and art. But, honestly, what’s this essay doing in a section about place?
At first, I was a bit taken aback by Fisher's assessment of Inception as a fairly banal film, but after watching him break it down and thinking about it myself, I'm convinced that he's right. The film could have been so much more . . . dreamlike, but it wasn't. It's like a "Starbucks" idea of dream, more shoot-em-up than oneiric and, therefore, quite disappointing when analyzed closely.
I can’t end this essay without mentioning the elephant in the room: Mark Fisher’s suicide in 2017. There are threads of depression throughout the work – it’s right there in the subtitle. One can see hints, perhaps warning signs, that Fisher’s depression was intractable. But the final essay, while openly acknowledging the damage done by privatization, the abandonment of public assistance, etc., is, in the end, downright hopeful. I never thought I'd say this, but Fisher's “”Tremors of an Imperceptible Future” is far too optimistic in its hope that the 2008 financial crisis might have turned our attitudes toward capital and climate change around. Not. A. Chance. I wonder if the loss of this hope was part of what drove him to suicide. It has to be more complicated than that, but I wonder if it was a contributing factor. We will never know.
June 23, 2014
Having read Ghosts of My Life, I now know hauntology refers to the psychological state of being haunted by a future that, for one reason or another, never arrived in one of modernity's many vacant slots. It's a bit more complicated than that though, and if some Deleuzian theoretician cornered me in an alley and browbeat me to a definition, I'd be more inclined to run away than hold my ground and submit a response.
But it is the brevity of explanation, and economy of opinion, that allows the non-philosopher to at least understand the fundamentals. Were the author not – ostensibly – a music journalist by origin, it's doubtful I would have read this sort of book at all, or if I had, the odds are I wouldn't have stuck with it. What makes Ghosts of My Life such a welcome read is that it is written with a journalist's short-form approach to fact, albeit with a florid capacity for academic dissection when required; the latter elevating the whole project above the sort of thing we might read on Vice or The Guardian.
The main idea of the book, or at least the one that seems to crop up most frequently, is this: while the means of transmitting culture has increased, culture itself has slowed down; what we actually see in C21st post-Ford capitalism is the means of production whirring at an ever-quickening pace, but the forms being shunted along by the process (everything from literature to graphic design, but with the main focus here on music) becoming increasingly bottle-necked by a tendency towards remixing, sampling and all other branches of recursion.
As author of Capitalist Realism, Fisher's opinions on the latter are unsurprising: with free-time increasingly encroached upon by market forces which require us to be 'online' virtually at all times, with the welfare safety-net that kept the likes of Morissey, the Sex Pistols, and many other musical acts, off the production line long enough for them to develop their talent, slowly being hauled away, is it any surprise that the C21st has broken so little ground in the typical areas staked out by cultural studies? Actually, I think it is: places like Berlin have seemingly resisted doctrinal austerity, but there still doesn't seem to be anything going on there comparable to the techno innovations Berlin heralded in the 80s and 90s. Also, it's worth considering that many of the bohemian radicals of the early C20th (certainly the painters) were funded by rich parents, and there are still plenty of those.
Unsurprising for a music critic, Fisher is much better when he is critiquing music – a branch of the arts which, though he considers bereft of practically any originality, he nonetheless takes great pleasure in analysing. This is also where Fisher's prose-abilities really come to life. I love the description in chapter 2 of Rufige Kru's ground-breaking record Terminator as possessing “aberrant, impossible geometries”. If you've ever heard this track, you'll know exactly what he means. I think the author is also onto something where he mentions the trend for Jungle producers at the time to sample, in addition to Terminator 1 & 2, Predator and Blade Runner and that these films are all connected by the act of hunting; one thing stalking another thing, either through the literal Jungle or the concrete one: an experience of paranoia and thrilling exhaustion which the whole genre, at least back then, conjured up perfectly.
What I was less impressed by were the articles on Burial and James Blake. Not that the writing flags in these parts, I just don't think either are particularly interesting – contra Fisher, I can't agree that Burial's debut album “delivered what 'Massive Attack' promised but never really achieved.” or that “it's everything Goldie's Timeless promised but never really achieved”. In spite of the obvious effort put in, Burial's music is always constrained by a sort of Tramadol-uniformity to my ears: all the tracks sound interchangeable, the inertia can barely lift a finger to switch sample packs: but maybe that's what Fisher likes about it all, and thinks is evoking of our late capitalist malaise.
Whether you agree with such counter-opinions, it's likely your enjoyment of this book will rest on similar matters of taste - i.e. whether you're as interested in or enraptured by the various musicians or film-makers that Fisher is. Yet when it comes time for the vicious take-downs of 'corporate hip hop' and the ubiquity of 'autotune music', most will probably be inclined to agree. The suggestion that Will.i.am's I Got A Feeling is the rather bleak, unconvincing self-help affirmation of a depressive attempting to goad himself into some form of social engagement - if only a swift half at Wetherspoons - is spot on. As is the more politically-minded analysis of Guetta's 'Play Hard' which is unremittingly savaged as “the perfect anthem for an era in which the boundaries between word and non-work are eroded”.
Perhaps the only real problem with Ghosts of My Life is that you'll be inclined to see the hauntological everywhere after finished it. And since the definition of hauntology is sometimes blurred and insubstantial, you might also spend unnecessary amounts of time questioning whether these are genuine examples at all. Is League of Gentleman hauntological? Is Moon Wiring Club? I think they might be, but I'm not entirety sure. There is certainly a bit in Looper which would easily qualify for inclusion. While brow-beating the protagonist, the mendacious boss of the looping syndicate remarks on our hero's clothes: “You're dressing like are just copying other movies. It's Goddamn twentieth century affectations. Do something new, huh? Put a glowing thing around your neck, or use rubberized...just be new.” Just a shame we'll have to wait till 2044 for the real backlash to begin.ii
But it is the brevity of explanation, and economy of opinion, that allows the non-philosopher to at least understand the fundamentals. Were the author not – ostensibly – a music journalist by origin, it's doubtful I would have read this sort of book at all, or if I had, the odds are I wouldn't have stuck with it. What makes Ghosts of My Life such a welcome read is that it is written with a journalist's short-form approach to fact, albeit with a florid capacity for academic dissection when required; the latter elevating the whole project above the sort of thing we might read on Vice or The Guardian.
The main idea of the book, or at least the one that seems to crop up most frequently, is this: while the means of transmitting culture has increased, culture itself has slowed down; what we actually see in C21st post-Ford capitalism is the means of production whirring at an ever-quickening pace, but the forms being shunted along by the process (everything from literature to graphic design, but with the main focus here on music) becoming increasingly bottle-necked by a tendency towards remixing, sampling and all other branches of recursion.
As author of Capitalist Realism, Fisher's opinions on the latter are unsurprising: with free-time increasingly encroached upon by market forces which require us to be 'online' virtually at all times, with the welfare safety-net that kept the likes of Morissey, the Sex Pistols, and many other musical acts, off the production line long enough for them to develop their talent, slowly being hauled away, is it any surprise that the C21st has broken so little ground in the typical areas staked out by cultural studies? Actually, I think it is: places like Berlin have seemingly resisted doctrinal austerity, but there still doesn't seem to be anything going on there comparable to the techno innovations Berlin heralded in the 80s and 90s. Also, it's worth considering that many of the bohemian radicals of the early C20th (certainly the painters) were funded by rich parents, and there are still plenty of those.
Unsurprising for a music critic, Fisher is much better when he is critiquing music – a branch of the arts which, though he considers bereft of practically any originality, he nonetheless takes great pleasure in analysing. This is also where Fisher's prose-abilities really come to life. I love the description in chapter 2 of Rufige Kru's ground-breaking record Terminator as possessing “aberrant, impossible geometries”. If you've ever heard this track, you'll know exactly what he means. I think the author is also onto something where he mentions the trend for Jungle producers at the time to sample, in addition to Terminator 1 & 2, Predator and Blade Runner and that these films are all connected by the act of hunting; one thing stalking another thing, either through the literal Jungle or the concrete one: an experience of paranoia and thrilling exhaustion which the whole genre, at least back then, conjured up perfectly.
What I was less impressed by were the articles on Burial and James Blake. Not that the writing flags in these parts, I just don't think either are particularly interesting – contra Fisher, I can't agree that Burial's debut album “delivered what 'Massive Attack' promised but never really achieved.” or that “it's everything Goldie's Timeless promised but never really achieved”. In spite of the obvious effort put in, Burial's music is always constrained by a sort of Tramadol-uniformity to my ears: all the tracks sound interchangeable, the inertia can barely lift a finger to switch sample packs: but maybe that's what Fisher likes about it all, and thinks is evoking of our late capitalist malaise.
Whether you agree with such counter-opinions, it's likely your enjoyment of this book will rest on similar matters of taste - i.e. whether you're as interested in or enraptured by the various musicians or film-makers that Fisher is. Yet when it comes time for the vicious take-downs of 'corporate hip hop' and the ubiquity of 'autotune music', most will probably be inclined to agree. The suggestion that Will.i.am's I Got A Feeling is the rather bleak, unconvincing self-help affirmation of a depressive attempting to goad himself into some form of social engagement - if only a swift half at Wetherspoons - is spot on. As is the more politically-minded analysis of Guetta's 'Play Hard' which is unremittingly savaged as “the perfect anthem for an era in which the boundaries between word and non-work are eroded”.
Perhaps the only real problem with Ghosts of My Life is that you'll be inclined to see the hauntological everywhere after finished it. And since the definition of hauntology is sometimes blurred and insubstantial, you might also spend unnecessary amounts of time questioning whether these are genuine examples at all. Is League of Gentleman hauntological? Is Moon Wiring Club? I think they might be, but I'm not entirety sure. There is certainly a bit in Looper which would easily qualify for inclusion. While brow-beating the protagonist, the mendacious boss of the looping syndicate remarks on our hero's clothes: “You're dressing like are just copying other movies. It's Goddamn twentieth century affectations. Do something new, huh? Put a glowing thing around your neck, or use rubberized...just be new.” Just a shame we'll have to wait till 2044 for the real backlash to begin.ii
November 19, 2022
The twenty-first century is so technologically potent that it allows for discrete temporalities to bleed through from everywhere, causing a schizophrenic confrontation of glossy images and noises inside the depressive-psychotic millennials and zoomers. There is so much chatter; so much noise. Since there is no time that belongs to this century as such, there is also a banality; everything is a yawn-inducing drag. Over-stimulation + over-saturation of the nerves with blasé images: so there is a hyper-acceleration and a suspension of time simultaneously. Hence, HAUNTOLOGY BOOOO. Everything today is a spectral husk, no blood, no sinews, or so he says. Maybe it's capitalism, maybe you have ADHD. Read this book to find out. Or don't. I like reading Mark Fisher, but this book is really only for you completionist perverts. Others can skip.
To sum up, this book taught me two things:
1) never look at cultural theorists to give you good music recs.
2) i do not give a flying fuck about musical analysis.
GOD IS THERE ANYTHING THAT HAS NOT BEEN SUBSUMED BY THE VAMPIRIC GHOST OF DISCOURSE? Whatever happened to just vibing?
To sum up, this book taught me two things:
1) never look at cultural theorists to give you good music recs.
2) i do not give a flying fuck about musical analysis.
GOD IS THERE ANYTHING THAT HAS NOT BEEN SUBSUMED BY THE VAMPIRIC GHOST OF DISCOURSE? Whatever happened to just vibing?
August 2, 2020
Tutto rallenta: l'eterno presente del capitale
“Sono un prigioniero. In qualche modo tornerò libero”.
La politica ha privatizzato la mente umana, afferma Mark Fisher, seguendo nell'analisi del neoliberalismo capitalista il concetto centrale nelle teorie di Fredric Jameson in The Seeds of Time: ”a noi sembra più facile immaginare il deterioramento della terra e della natura che il crollo del tardocapitalismo; forse ciò è dovuto a una debolezza della nostra immaginazione”. Mark Fisher muove quindi dai margini delle tesi presenti in Realismo Capitalista e rende le sue idee adattabili e verificabili a contatto con la materia di critica teorica dell'arte e dei media, nello specifico in qualità di studioso di musica, cinema e comunicazione. Così, è necessaria una determinata e determinante pazienza politica per concepire un futuro compatibile con l'incommensurabilità riconoscibile tra l'esistenza umana e la storia collettiva, trovando una strategia di sopravvivenza che contrappone all'estinzione una «biofilia» capace di immaginare una vita dopo la catastrofe, in una prospettiva di superamento ecologico radicale. I sentimenti centrali nel racconto di Fisher sono la malinconia e la rabbia; una condizione esistenziale immanente al suo discorso è l'hauntology: ciò che agisce senza essere fisicamente presente, una relazione spettrale con ciò che non è più o non è ancora. A vivere queste realtà, c'è una generazione perduta, coloro a cui è sfuggito il tempo, che non possono essere né rigenerati né riqualificati. Nessuna opzione tra adattarsi o morire, nessun entusiasmo creativo, nessuna reattività al business, solo indigenza, depressione, dipendenza, devianza, collasso. Persone che sono immerse nel cyberspazio, nomadi leibniziane prive di finestre, che incontrano solo simulacri virtuali e estensioni interattive, mentre simultaneamente comunicano e si relazionano con l'interezza globale, la rete speculare della realtà universale. Siamo caduti, secondo Fisher, che qui segue Paul Gilroy e Simon Reynolds, in una società incapace di affrontare il tempo e la storia, che procede per inerzia, creando vuoti iterativi, ripetendo bolle formali a servizio del mercato, dove l'attenzione è assediata dalla tecnica, l'incontro tra esseri umani è de-erotizzato, la velocità convive con l'instabilità. Così Fisher si mette alla ricerca delle crisi temporali e delle crisi di spazio; momenti che siano in grado di scardinare l'identità. L'ambiguità è così fonte non di disprezzo, ma di contaminazione, la nostalgia porta non all'euforia infelice, ma a forme di desiderio e liberazione. Un breve elenco della materia artistica trattata: Inception di Christopher Nolan e Shining di Stanley Kubrick, David Peace, John Le Carré e W.G.Sebald; Burial, John Foxx, Tricky, Joy Division e The Caretaker. Nella concreta espressività e nella retrospezione oscura di questi artisti, si trova secondo Fisher la messa a fuoco del presente e del soggetto, la rappresentazione estetica dell'esperienza attuale. Delicate fantasie, immagini oniriche di memoria fattiva, sonorità minimaliste, narrazioni utopiche e discroniche. Viviamo ormai in città palinsesto, dove le fragilità sociali si stratificano e le intimità sono frammentarie ed enigmatiche. Non c'è nulla da cui difendersi, c'è una tensione emotiva che può far risonare la luminosità interiore. Se potessimo accantonare la pressione a essere se stessi, usare diversamente il tempo, tracciare una geografia precaria, si potrebbe ricavare una visione alternativa di corrispondenze, sradicamenti e incanti, restituendosi alla natura transitoria di spazi comunitari e integrativi. La nostra condizione è intrisa di un senso di perdita, ci muoviamo in retromarcia, verso un domani basato su un passato mai esistito. Fondativa è la nostra infelicità, nel mondo postfordista, nell'economia dei servizi: ma essa è opera di molte mani anonime, è segretamente impiantata in noi da un lavoro cognitivo inesauribile e progressivo, è un inganno che penetra il possesso dell'io. Ma è una finzione, è un'ombra, è un sogno. L'urgenza di riscrivere noi stessi come finzioni che sembrano reali è presente in ciascuno di noi. Un conto, scrive Fisher, è mentire a se stessi, un altro è non sapere se stiamo mentendo oppure no. La felicità, la liberazione dall'angoscia di vivere, il disinteresse per gli spettri della mia vita. A che prezzo? Mark Fisher ne ha pagato uno incalcolabile.
“Sono un prigioniero. In qualche modo tornerò libero”.
La politica ha privatizzato la mente umana, afferma Mark Fisher, seguendo nell'analisi del neoliberalismo capitalista il concetto centrale nelle teorie di Fredric Jameson in The Seeds of Time: ”a noi sembra più facile immaginare il deterioramento della terra e della natura che il crollo del tardocapitalismo; forse ciò è dovuto a una debolezza della nostra immaginazione”. Mark Fisher muove quindi dai margini delle tesi presenti in Realismo Capitalista e rende le sue idee adattabili e verificabili a contatto con la materia di critica teorica dell'arte e dei media, nello specifico in qualità di studioso di musica, cinema e comunicazione. Così, è necessaria una determinata e determinante pazienza politica per concepire un futuro compatibile con l'incommensurabilità riconoscibile tra l'esistenza umana e la storia collettiva, trovando una strategia di sopravvivenza che contrappone all'estinzione una «biofilia» capace di immaginare una vita dopo la catastrofe, in una prospettiva di superamento ecologico radicale. I sentimenti centrali nel racconto di Fisher sono la malinconia e la rabbia; una condizione esistenziale immanente al suo discorso è l'hauntology: ciò che agisce senza essere fisicamente presente, una relazione spettrale con ciò che non è più o non è ancora. A vivere queste realtà, c'è una generazione perduta, coloro a cui è sfuggito il tempo, che non possono essere né rigenerati né riqualificati. Nessuna opzione tra adattarsi o morire, nessun entusiasmo creativo, nessuna reattività al business, solo indigenza, depressione, dipendenza, devianza, collasso. Persone che sono immerse nel cyberspazio, nomadi leibniziane prive di finestre, che incontrano solo simulacri virtuali e estensioni interattive, mentre simultaneamente comunicano e si relazionano con l'interezza globale, la rete speculare della realtà universale. Siamo caduti, secondo Fisher, che qui segue Paul Gilroy e Simon Reynolds, in una società incapace di affrontare il tempo e la storia, che procede per inerzia, creando vuoti iterativi, ripetendo bolle formali a servizio del mercato, dove l'attenzione è assediata dalla tecnica, l'incontro tra esseri umani è de-erotizzato, la velocità convive con l'instabilità. Così Fisher si mette alla ricerca delle crisi temporali e delle crisi di spazio; momenti che siano in grado di scardinare l'identità. L'ambiguità è così fonte non di disprezzo, ma di contaminazione, la nostalgia porta non all'euforia infelice, ma a forme di desiderio e liberazione. Un breve elenco della materia artistica trattata: Inception di Christopher Nolan e Shining di Stanley Kubrick, David Peace, John Le Carré e W.G.Sebald; Burial, John Foxx, Tricky, Joy Division e The Caretaker. Nella concreta espressività e nella retrospezione oscura di questi artisti, si trova secondo Fisher la messa a fuoco del presente e del soggetto, la rappresentazione estetica dell'esperienza attuale. Delicate fantasie, immagini oniriche di memoria fattiva, sonorità minimaliste, narrazioni utopiche e discroniche. Viviamo ormai in città palinsesto, dove le fragilità sociali si stratificano e le intimità sono frammentarie ed enigmatiche. Non c'è nulla da cui difendersi, c'è una tensione emotiva che può far risonare la luminosità interiore. Se potessimo accantonare la pressione a essere se stessi, usare diversamente il tempo, tracciare una geografia precaria, si potrebbe ricavare una visione alternativa di corrispondenze, sradicamenti e incanti, restituendosi alla natura transitoria di spazi comunitari e integrativi. La nostra condizione è intrisa di un senso di perdita, ci muoviamo in retromarcia, verso un domani basato su un passato mai esistito. Fondativa è la nostra infelicità, nel mondo postfordista, nell'economia dei servizi: ma essa è opera di molte mani anonime, è segretamente impiantata in noi da un lavoro cognitivo inesauribile e progressivo, è un inganno che penetra il possesso dell'io. Ma è una finzione, è un'ombra, è un sogno. L'urgenza di riscrivere noi stessi come finzioni che sembrano reali è presente in ciascuno di noi. Un conto, scrive Fisher, è mentire a se stessi, un altro è non sapere se stiamo mentendo oppure no. La felicità, la liberazione dall'angoscia di vivere, il disinteresse per gli spettri della mia vita. A che prezzo? Mark Fisher ne ha pagato uno incalcolabile.
March 14, 2020
Another work I wish I had discovered back when I was writing my thesis on melancholia and cultural production. Fisher's hauntology essays, the original text from Derrida, and selected Lacanian theory would really have filled out the early sections nicely. I used Kristeva but wasn't ready yet to absorb Lacan in pure form. Am I haunted by the thesis I promised myself but that never appeared? Possibly...
My natural inclinations lead me to be rather inclined to Fisher’s thoughts regarding hauntology. I often see the loss felt for something promised but never to have existed, or never to exist, threading its way through much of what happens with culture and the people around me. Is it our material social situations that heighten the personal psychological feeling of nostalgia, melancholia and existential grasping? Or as I have read Lacan to suggest, is it an originary gap felt as a loss caused very early by The Other whose desires we can never know, but must figure out to survive, that then adumbrates out to our culture and worldview? Can it merely be bad biochemistry in some but not others?
Is it even possible to read Fisher’s essays on hauntology and not wonder how his thoughts and theories were intertwined with his own personal psychology and eventual death?
I thought many of the essays here caught at something very interesting, leading me sideways on enjoyable generative trains of thought. If I had one quibble, and it’s been mentioned by others, it’s that his views on music and the lack of anything new after a certain random cut off point seems insular and contained within his own very personal social vision based on age, location, race, personal history, etc. While it is true that the rapid acceleration of change can sometimes present as a blur that is never changing, it seems fairly objective to say that there is music being produced today that would not seem totally ordinary and unusual if listened to 20 years ago.
My natural inclinations lead me to be rather inclined to Fisher’s thoughts regarding hauntology. I often see the loss felt for something promised but never to have existed, or never to exist, threading its way through much of what happens with culture and the people around me. Is it our material social situations that heighten the personal psychological feeling of nostalgia, melancholia and existential grasping? Or as I have read Lacan to suggest, is it an originary gap felt as a loss caused very early by The Other whose desires we can never know, but must figure out to survive, that then adumbrates out to our culture and worldview? Can it merely be bad biochemistry in some but not others?
Is it even possible to read Fisher’s essays on hauntology and not wonder how his thoughts and theories were intertwined with his own personal psychology and eventual death?
I thought many of the essays here caught at something very interesting, leading me sideways on enjoyable generative trains of thought. If I had one quibble, and it’s been mentioned by others, it’s that his views on music and the lack of anything new after a certain random cut off point seems insular and contained within his own very personal social vision based on age, location, race, personal history, etc. While it is true that the rapid acceleration of change can sometimes present as a blur that is never changing, it seems fairly objective to say that there is music being produced today that would not seem totally ordinary and unusual if listened to 20 years ago.
August 26, 2019
The slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied by a deflation of expectations.
You're killing me, Zero Books, just killing me. Years ago, when Hope and Change were in the air my wife asked me what sort of revolutionary are you? I responded, I'm a janitor -- which is likely a quote from a George Clooney film. Such is the sinew of my critical ontology.
I am now somewhat 0-3 for Zero Books as far as rolling my eyes, a curt "really" being emitted. This collection of recycled blog posts and reviews is supposed to mark an epoch. I noticed exactly one reference to Iain Sinclair in the entire tome. I think if Fisher had read more Sinclair he may have sought a precursor for his own project. His own conclusions are the same ones that Sinclair (and Moorcock and Alan Moore) have been making for twenty years. Instead Fisher brandishes Derrida on the Communist Manifesto and explores obscure music.
I do find that interesting.
Fisher states that one could take an Artic Monkeys release and play it in the 1980s and it would sound normative. He argues that Adele and Amy Winehouse for all their verve made spectral songs which could fit into earlier periods but do not explore or establish a new aesthetic. Emm, okay. Then later and in a different context Fisher asserts that the ads of today wouldn't be comprehensible to audiences of even 15 years ago. I think you might be on to something. It is dangerous work when one asserts what could and couldn't be.
You're killing me, Zero Books, just killing me. Years ago, when Hope and Change were in the air my wife asked me what sort of revolutionary are you? I responded, I'm a janitor -- which is likely a quote from a George Clooney film. Such is the sinew of my critical ontology.
I am now somewhat 0-3 for Zero Books as far as rolling my eyes, a curt "really" being emitted. This collection of recycled blog posts and reviews is supposed to mark an epoch. I noticed exactly one reference to Iain Sinclair in the entire tome. I think if Fisher had read more Sinclair he may have sought a precursor for his own project. His own conclusions are the same ones that Sinclair (and Moorcock and Alan Moore) have been making for twenty years. Instead Fisher brandishes Derrida on the Communist Manifesto and explores obscure music.
I do find that interesting.
Fisher states that one could take an Artic Monkeys release and play it in the 1980s and it would sound normative. He argues that Adele and Amy Winehouse for all their verve made spectral songs which could fit into earlier periods but do not explore or establish a new aesthetic. Emm, okay. Then later and in a different context Fisher asserts that the ads of today wouldn't be comprehensible to audiences of even 15 years ago. I think you might be on to something. It is dangerous work when one asserts what could and couldn't be.
Read
July 2, 2019If we live in a philosophical era, it is Fisherian. I know that's a bold and perhaps even hyperbolic statement, but I firmly believe it to be true. Musically and cinematically, it's true, and the only reason it isn't true literarily is that the tastes of the "literary fiction"-buying public haven't caught up. We live in a world haunted by the promised futures that never came to be, and the cultural products of our time reflect this haunting. If you're so inclined, I wrote more extensively on this topic here:
http://subjectslashobject.blogspot.co...
http://subjectslashobject.blogspot.co...
January 14, 2018
Don't be fooled, this is just a reprint. The ghosts of Mark Fisher's life are actually blogs, mostly from his old k-punk journal, which you can read for free online. Or print out at the library. The only thing to recommend Blogs of My Life as a physical book, besides the nice teal cover, is the introduction, written specifically for this volume. To be fair it's a very good introduction. In fact, I think it contained more insight and just plain good writing than the rest of the essays combined, although they were mostly about music I've never listened to, films I've never seen, novels I've never read. The pop culture from Mark Fisher's youth, he assures me, is much better than anything I grew up with. He may have a point.
The book mostly held my attention, even though I don't share Fisher's interests. In fact, he condemns the specific period of my adolescence as a cultural desert, "It's clear to me that now the period from roughly 2003 to the present will be recognised - not in the far distant future, but very soon - as the worst period for (popular) culture since the 1950s." And he's not wrong, in fact he's usually at his best & most insightful when heartlessly censorious. Fisher's right about about the sadistic inequality of neoliberalism, its deadening repercussions for late capitalist subjects and the art & entertainment we guzzle, he's right about the polyvalence of memory as an aesthetic form (hauntology = good, nostalgia = bad), he's right about boredom, ecstasy, the vapidity of 2005, the steady decline of the London club scene, and the network of narcissistic feedback loops in digital telecommunication. He's even right about Christopher Nolan. He's much less interesting about the things he likes, though--I physically cringed when he called Burial a "sound poet".
The thematic continuity in these essays is not really hauntology though, which is always sort of vague. Maybe necessarily so, Fisher refers to it somewhere or another as the cultural materialization of lost memory. I find it more useful to think of it as the ontologization of historical materialism, since that's kind of what Derrida's doing in Specters of Marx and it's kind of what Fisher's doing here. The 'slow cancellation of the future', neoliberalism's desiccating foreclosures of possibility is not elaborated in full political dimension, but registered as a very personal sense of tragedy. The lost futures we choreographed in futility instead play out in our depression & despondency, or across avant garde art, in both Derrida and Fisher's estimations--rather than in global poverty, endless warfare or ecological catastrophe. These are the ghosts that spook Derrida and Fisher's books, which are narrower in scope, but haunted by the large-scale conflicts that they only allude to.
Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism and The Weird & The Eerie were both great (and actual books, not just reprinted blogs), and insomniac come-down readings of k-punk at 3am off the dull light of your smartphone is not an experience to be foregone. But I'd really only recommend this volume to completionists.
The book mostly held my attention, even though I don't share Fisher's interests. In fact, he condemns the specific period of my adolescence as a cultural desert, "It's clear to me that now the period from roughly 2003 to the present will be recognised - not in the far distant future, but very soon - as the worst period for (popular) culture since the 1950s." And he's not wrong, in fact he's usually at his best & most insightful when heartlessly censorious. Fisher's right about about the sadistic inequality of neoliberalism, its deadening repercussions for late capitalist subjects and the art & entertainment we guzzle, he's right about the polyvalence of memory as an aesthetic form (hauntology = good, nostalgia = bad), he's right about boredom, ecstasy, the vapidity of 2005, the steady decline of the London club scene, and the network of narcissistic feedback loops in digital telecommunication. He's even right about Christopher Nolan. He's much less interesting about the things he likes, though--I physically cringed when he called Burial a "sound poet".
The thematic continuity in these essays is not really hauntology though, which is always sort of vague. Maybe necessarily so, Fisher refers to it somewhere or another as the cultural materialization of lost memory. I find it more useful to think of it as the ontologization of historical materialism, since that's kind of what Derrida's doing in Specters of Marx and it's kind of what Fisher's doing here. The 'slow cancellation of the future', neoliberalism's desiccating foreclosures of possibility is not elaborated in full political dimension, but registered as a very personal sense of tragedy. The lost futures we choreographed in futility instead play out in our depression & despondency, or across avant garde art, in both Derrida and Fisher's estimations--rather than in global poverty, endless warfare or ecological catastrophe. These are the ghosts that spook Derrida and Fisher's books, which are narrower in scope, but haunted by the large-scale conflicts that they only allude to.
Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism and The Weird & The Eerie were both great (and actual books, not just reprinted blogs), and insomniac come-down readings of k-punk at 3am off the dull light of your smartphone is not an experience to be foregone. But I'd really only recommend this volume to completionists.
May 24, 2014
A collection of blog posts and short essays from the past 10 years or so, loosely connected around the notion of "hauntology", which Fisher takes from Derrida's "Specters Of Marx" (although the word first appeared in Christine Brooke-Rose's "Amalgamemnon" in 1984). This contains some interesting views on, amongst other things: Joy Division, adaptations of Le Carre, the works of W.G.Sebald, the music of Goldie and Tricky, the films of Chris Petit and Patrick Keiller. "Hauntology" itself is thinly described and doesn't contribute much as a theoretical device except as a loose peg to hang the threads upon.
November 24, 2021
Fisher is always worth reading for the fascinating connections he makes between aspects of culture and the hypotheses he derives from those connections. This collection of old blog posts and short essays, however, is not among his most satisfying works. Interesting for those of us who grew up in the time of TV’s ‘Sapphire and Steel’, who idolized the band ‘Joy Division’, and who have a soft spot for Derrida’s ‘hauntology’, but I can’t imagine it saying much to anyone not having gone through that period.
February 21, 2021
Mark Fisher: *talks about music and films I've never listened to/watched and know nothing about*
me: haha so true, king!!!
me: haha so true, king!!!
July 8, 2023
Shadow Theatre
Worthwhile reading mainly for its musical, filmic, literary references and some thought-provoking observations about our contemporary cultural landscape (it has been published in 2013)
... this collection mostly consisting of blog entries (https://k-punk.org/) is severely wanting in the politics/economics department, this part amounting mostly to marxist catch phrases and routine anticapitalist charges. Oh, and mid-20th-century-French-philosophy-inspired puns...
Some of the references studied throughout the book:
Music:
Burial Album
Untrue Album
Jungle - Goldie
The Caretaker
Japan Ghosts
‘It’s All Forgotten Now'
Little Axe Stone Cold Ohio
Ghost Box
Miniatures – Sourdine
Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic
Schlaf (Nach Einführung Der Psychoanalyse)
Jonathan – Richter (Alphabet 1968)
Position Normal
Foxx’s instrumental music – on Tiny Colour Movies and on the three Cathedral Oceans CDs,
and with
Harold Budd on the Transluscence and Drift Music Lps
Funhouse the Stooges
The Caretaker Albums
Album So This is Goodbye
Savage Messiah
Junior boys
Films:
In the Mouth of Madness - John Carpenter
Shining - Stanley Kubrick
...
Books:
Non-places
After the future
Red Riding Quartet
Soundtrack:
https://youtu.be/wJWksPWDKOc
--------
Other references
Urbex : 50 lieux secrets et abandonnés en France
Ougarit
Octobre Liban
Le naufrage des civilisations
L'individu qui vient... après le libéralisme
Ubik
L'art du roman
La carte et le territoire
Plateforme
Interventions
Ruines et vestiges
303: Mémoires industrielles
Niourk
The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies
Zothique
Worthwhile reading mainly for its musical, filmic, literary references and some thought-provoking observations about our contemporary cultural landscape (it has been published in 2013)
... this collection mostly consisting of blog entries (https://k-punk.org/) is severely wanting in the politics/economics department, this part amounting mostly to marxist catch phrases and routine anticapitalist charges. Oh, and mid-20th-century-French-philosophy-inspired puns...
Some of the references studied throughout the book:
Music:
Burial Album
Untrue Album
Jungle - Goldie
The Caretaker
Japan Ghosts
‘It’s All Forgotten Now'
Little Axe Stone Cold Ohio
Ghost Box
Miniatures – Sourdine
Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic
Schlaf (Nach Einführung Der Psychoanalyse)
Jonathan – Richter (Alphabet 1968)
Position Normal
Foxx’s instrumental music – on Tiny Colour Movies and on the three Cathedral Oceans CDs,
and with
Harold Budd on the Transluscence and Drift Music Lps
Funhouse the Stooges
The Caretaker Albums
Album So This is Goodbye
Savage Messiah
Junior boys
Films:
In the Mouth of Madness - John Carpenter
Shining - Stanley Kubrick
...
Books:
Non-places
After the future
Red Riding Quartet
Soundtrack:
https://youtu.be/wJWksPWDKOc
--------
Other references
Urbex : 50 lieux secrets et abandonnés en France
Ougarit
Octobre Liban
Le naufrage des civilisations
L'individu qui vient... après le libéralisme
Ubik
L'art du roman
La carte et le territoire
Plateforme
Interventions
Ruines et vestiges
303: Mémoires industrielles
Niourk
The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies
Zothique
March 8, 2026
Mark Fisher is my gold standard for cultural criticism. Like a majority of readers who got their first taste of his incredible prescience through the specific resonance of Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? this side of the twenty-first century, I too was unfamiliar with a good chunk of the music, TV, film, and literature discussed in Ghosts of my Life . That didn't dampen my enjoyment in the least; in fact I found it productive to approach the book as a sort of emotional history of the early years of this millennium, written by someone who came of age before the neoliberal enclosure of the imagination, when popular culture was still capable of reflecting the political aspirations of the masses and time had yet to feel like it was running on a perpetual loop. In these essays and others originally posted to the blogosphere, he calls our attention to 'the slow cancellation of the future', and how those who can't remember the past are condemned to have it resold to them forever.
The world – the texture of everyday experience – has been altered beyond recognition in the dozen years since this book was first published, and yet popular culture remains stilted. Consider Fisher's idea of 'past shock', articulated in terms of music but applicable to all aspects of culture:
Ultimately, the emotional history, 'Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures', is also a work of prophecy. Depression suddenly cancelled Fisher's own future – he died by suicide in 2017, and his leave-taking turned him into an intellectual spectre who continues to haunt our thinking nearly a decade on. But these pages are nevertheless full of hope, not devoid of it. Indeed, in diagnosing the problem across his body of work, Fisher aimed to reignite a sense of hope, to make us see beyond capitalist realism, neoliberal accumulation and the 'negative' aspects of hauntology even if he wouldn't live to see us through it:
The world – the texture of everyday experience – has been altered beyond recognition in the dozen years since this book was first published, and yet popular culture remains stilted. Consider Fisher's idea of 'past shock', articulated in terms of music but applicable to all aspects of culture:
Imagine any record released in the past couple of years being beamed back in time to, say, 1995 and played on the radio. It’s hard to think that it will produce any jolt in the listeners. On the contrary, what would be likely to shock our 1995 audience would be the very recognisability of the sounds: would music really have changed so little in the next 17 years? Contrast this with the rapid turnover of styles between the 1960s and the 90s: play a jungle record from 1993 to someone in 1989 and it would have sounded like something so new that it would have challenged them to rethink what music was, or could be. While 20th-century experimental culture was seized by a recombinatorial delirium, which made it feel as if newness was infinitely available, the 21st century is oppressed by a crushing sense of finitude and exhaustion. It doesn’t feel like the future. Or, alternatively, it doesn’t feel as if the 21st century has started yet ... The feeling of belatedness, of living after the gold rush, is as omnipresent as it is disavowed. Compare the fallow terrain of the current moment with the fecundity of previous periods and you will quickly be accused of ‘nostalgia’. But the reliance of current artists on styles that were established long ago suggests that the current moment is in the grip of a formal nostalgia .or,
Consider the fate of the concept of ‘futuristic’ music. The ‘futuristic’ in music has long since ceased to refer to any future that we expect to be different; it has become an established style, much like a particular typographical font. Invited to think of the futuristic, we will still come up with something like the music of Kraftwerk, even though this is now as antique as Glenn Miller’s big band jazz was when the German group began experimenting with synthesizers in the early 1970s. Where is the 21st-century equivalent of Kraftwerk?It's true: we are living today in an era of retromania, of remakes, refurbishment, regurgitation and ceaseless anachronism where nothing feels truly startling, where crackle added to 80s-leaning tunes created entirely digitally coexists with £20 plastic record players, where people are sold an 'analogue' aesthetic by very machines we have been trapped into conducting our most important, intimate and mundane everyday tasks with. The present recedes behind the homogenising technologies of neoliberalism, haunted by a past it cannot meaningfully recover and a future that simply does not come to pass. What we have lost, it can often seem, is the very possibility of loss.
Ultimately, the emotional history, 'Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures', is also a work of prophecy. Depression suddenly cancelled Fisher's own future – he died by suicide in 2017, and his leave-taking turned him into an intellectual spectre who continues to haunt our thinking nearly a decade on. But these pages are nevertheless full of hope, not devoid of it. Indeed, in diagnosing the problem across his body of work, Fisher aimed to reignite a sense of hope, to make us see beyond capitalist realism, neoliberal accumulation and the 'negative' aspects of hauntology even if he wouldn't live to see us through it:
Confronted with capital’s intense semiotic pollution, its encrustation of the urban environment with idiotic sigils and imbecilic slogans no-one – neither the people who wrote them nor those at whom they are aimed – believes, you often wonder: what if all the effort that went into this flashy trash were devoted to a public good?
...
What is being longed for in hauntology is not a particular period, but the resumption of the processes of democratisation and pluralism ... Perhaps it’s useful to remind ourselves here that social democracy has only become a resolved totality in retrospect; at the time, it was a compromise formation, which those on the left saw as a temporary bridgehead from which further gains could be won. What should haunt us is not the no longer of actually existing social democracy, but the not yet of the futures that popular modernism trained us to expect, but which never materialised. These spectres – the spectres of lost futures – reproach the formal nostalgia of the capitalist realist world.
October 29, 2019
I'd probably rate this higher if I cared as much about most of the pop culture he writes about. The introductory essay on hauntology is good, and might be a good diagnosis of our point in history. The Joy Division essay is profound, which makes me wish I could muster up as much interest in pieces on The Shining, Burial, Inception, Kanye West, etc. RIP Fisher, but I wish some of our most interesting thinkers weren't so obsessed with pop culture. Then again, it's the way of the world isn't it?
November 4, 2014
I bought this after enjoying ‘Capitalist Realism’ and having followed the author’s blog (k-punk) on and off for a number of years. This is actually a compilation of writings published there and for other magazines and websites, and I think some of it was familiar to me, but there was nothing here that I minded re-reading. The title, and the beautifully written introductory essay on ‘Sapphire and Steel’, had actually led me to believe that this would be a more personal and perhaps biographical book; but for the most part the author’s personality is relegated to the periphery, and instead what we have is a solid collection of idiosyncratic cultural and social criticism.
While the nature of the collection is fragmented, most of the articles have a great deal in common; the author has a relatively narrow selection of tools and themes which are applied to all kinds of subjects, as if they were favourite instruments taken from a toolbox. ‘Hauntology’ is one reoccurring notion; a term inherited from Derrida, its exact definition isn’t exactly clear, but (to skip through the worst of the theory stuff) it seems to refer to an artistic tendency towards melancholy filtered through a preoccupation with the way technology materialises memory. Here, the tag is most frequently applied to musicians like Burial and Philip Jeck, but it many cases it simply seems to be a convenient hook on which to hang those artists whose work appealed to the author. By the end I was left wondering why words like that were required at all; the only conclusion I can draw was that this kind of authoritative vocabulary is probably necessary, given the unsteady line the book treads between academic writing and popular criticism.
The one strongest pole about which all the points of interest drift is the legacy culture of the 1970s through to the 1990s. The argument runs that the current state of pop culture is still running off a kind of exhausted mimicry of this period; that much of what passes for pop music, for example, is a tame version of house/rave culture with the edges sanded off. Indeed, our whole notion of what it might mean to be ‘futuristic’ still seems to be stuck somewhere in the 70s/80s; but that future has been infinitely postponed, and what we’re left with is a pale simulacra. (The author is careful to emphasise that his arguments aren’t simply nostalgia, but I wasn’t entirely convinced by this.) Politics and music are the main topics, but there’s also some good stuff on ‘Life on Mars’, Joy Division, the work of novelist David Peace, and the dark legacy of Jimmy Savile. The writing is really quite good, and though I don’t necessarily agree with some of what he has to say, I do think he’s one of our most important and penetrating critics.
Coming out of this book, I found it difficult to imagine what the author wants from his world. There is much regret about the state of things, but there’s little in the way of imaginative vision. The scope of obsessions documented is ultimately narrow and predictable: anything Ballardian; psychogeography (a term much denied); the cultural logic of late capitalism that bleeds through all things; music with an authentic vinyl crackle to it; the sight of an overgrown factory or patch of untended waste ground — all things which stir my heart, too! — but what else? I can’t agree that the current state of things offers nothing at all of interest beyond that which leans on the past, however obliquely, and by the time the book comes around to accusing W.G. Sebald of ‘a stock disdain’ for the Suffolk landscapes of ‘The Rings of Saturn’, I was beginning to wonder if the author wasn’t a little guilty of that himself.
While the nature of the collection is fragmented, most of the articles have a great deal in common; the author has a relatively narrow selection of tools and themes which are applied to all kinds of subjects, as if they were favourite instruments taken from a toolbox. ‘Hauntology’ is one reoccurring notion; a term inherited from Derrida, its exact definition isn’t exactly clear, but (to skip through the worst of the theory stuff) it seems to refer to an artistic tendency towards melancholy filtered through a preoccupation with the way technology materialises memory. Here, the tag is most frequently applied to musicians like Burial and Philip Jeck, but it many cases it simply seems to be a convenient hook on which to hang those artists whose work appealed to the author. By the end I was left wondering why words like that were required at all; the only conclusion I can draw was that this kind of authoritative vocabulary is probably necessary, given the unsteady line the book treads between academic writing and popular criticism.
The one strongest pole about which all the points of interest drift is the legacy culture of the 1970s through to the 1990s. The argument runs that the current state of pop culture is still running off a kind of exhausted mimicry of this period; that much of what passes for pop music, for example, is a tame version of house/rave culture with the edges sanded off. Indeed, our whole notion of what it might mean to be ‘futuristic’ still seems to be stuck somewhere in the 70s/80s; but that future has been infinitely postponed, and what we’re left with is a pale simulacra. (The author is careful to emphasise that his arguments aren’t simply nostalgia, but I wasn’t entirely convinced by this.) Politics and music are the main topics, but there’s also some good stuff on ‘Life on Mars’, Joy Division, the work of novelist David Peace, and the dark legacy of Jimmy Savile. The writing is really quite good, and though I don’t necessarily agree with some of what he has to say, I do think he’s one of our most important and penetrating critics.
Coming out of this book, I found it difficult to imagine what the author wants from his world. There is much regret about the state of things, but there’s little in the way of imaginative vision. The scope of obsessions documented is ultimately narrow and predictable: anything Ballardian; psychogeography (a term much denied); the cultural logic of late capitalism that bleeds through all things; music with an authentic vinyl crackle to it; the sight of an overgrown factory or patch of untended waste ground — all things which stir my heart, too! — but what else? I can’t agree that the current state of things offers nothing at all of interest beyond that which leans on the past, however obliquely, and by the time the book comes around to accusing W.G. Sebald of ‘a stock disdain’ for the Suffolk landscapes of ‘The Rings of Saturn’, I was beginning to wonder if the author wasn’t a little guilty of that himself.
sampled
March 4, 2022Intermittently compelling. From what I read of it, though, there isn't enough writing directly on 'depression' to warrant its presence in the subtitle (especially listed first in sequence). However, given that Fisher struggled with depression, perhaps he saw at least some of these writings more as originating from that place than specifically about that place.
November 22, 2019
the only cultural criticism book that made me cry...
March 14, 2023
We lost so much when we lost Mark Fisher. I haven't even heard of half of the music he talks about here, but the feeling of life in the ruins, of the "slow cancellation of the future," just resonates so hard.
October 23, 2020
Tercer libro de Fisher que leo y, para qué negarlo, el que más me ha costado. Un poco por ser demasiado recopilación de artículos, alguno un tanto oscuro para mi; particularmente el primero, el más importante, donde siembra las bases de dos de las ideas guía de Los fantasmas de mi vida: la lenta cancelación del futuro y las "hauntologías". He captado la generalidad, aunque hay ciertas asociaciones en las que me he perdido. Además también he chocado con mis escasos conocimientos musicales contemporáneos cuando Fisher desarrolla su tesis a través de su paradigma favorito: cómo una maquinaria corporativa basada en el consumo y la represión ha sesgado una de las mayores manifestaciones culturales del cambio; se centra en muchos estilos, compositores, canciones que me son desconocidas. Al menos acierta a navegar entre lo particular y lo general y siempre he recuperado el golpe de pedal.
Artículos que me han gustado especialmente: el centrado en Ian Curtis y la depresión alejada de cualquier denotación y connotación propia de la melancolía como guía de Joy Division; utilizar a The Jam como guía de las tensiones que han desgarrado a la clase trabajadora desde finales de los 70; las notas sobre El Resplandor y sus hauntologías; las maneras en que la gentrificación ha transformado Londres, hasta el punto de casi borrar la ciudad que estaba empezando a ser; o esa lectura de Inception como ejemplo de cómo el realismo capitalista ha colonizado nuestros sueños. Más allá de que otros textos los haya terminado leyendo en diagonal, Fisher siempre abre miradas. Y en este libro entra en claves que merece la pena descubrir.
Artículos que me han gustado especialmente: el centrado en Ian Curtis y la depresión alejada de cualquier denotación y connotación propia de la melancolía como guía de Joy Division; utilizar a The Jam como guía de las tensiones que han desgarrado a la clase trabajadora desde finales de los 70; las notas sobre El Resplandor y sus hauntologías; las maneras en que la gentrificación ha transformado Londres, hasta el punto de casi borrar la ciudad que estaba empezando a ser; o esa lectura de Inception como ejemplo de cómo el realismo capitalista ha colonizado nuestros sueños. Más allá de que otros textos los haya terminado leyendo en diagonal, Fisher siempre abre miradas. Y en este libro entra en claves que merece la pena descubrir.
May 29, 2024
rip mark fisher you would have loved por cesárea
June 9, 2024
¡Qué urgente sería tener más voces como la de Mark Fisher!
July 13, 2021
Увидеть сокрытое либидо в треках Burial может только тот, кто хочет переспать с этим самым Burial.
По этой книге создалось впечатление, что Марк Фишер послушал пару-тройку действительно впечатляющих альбомов, влюбился в "Сияние" Кубрика и Кинга, начитался Деррида и стал вообще все будущие релизы натягивать на не столь обширный глобус своих вкусов и познаний. Везде у него призраки, неолиберализм, рассуждения о сексуальности и маскулинности того или иного жанра. Все это выглядит ограниченным и утомительным. Хотя, где-то к середине ты уже играешь сам с собой в игру "на выпивание" — а как сейчас Марк Фишер приплетет политику. И ведь приплетает, стервец.
Ничего нового книга мне не дала, но заставила переслушать дебютник Трики и альбом so this is goodbye Джуниор Бойс. Было приятно натыкаться на знакомые имена. А еще у книги был шарящий редактор, что выглядит просто божественным вмешательством.
И, самое занятное, Марк Фишер подтвердил, что у Burial нытье ради нытья:
«Мои новые треки об этом, – подтверждает Burial. – О том, как хочется иметь ангела-хранителя, когда тебе некуда пойти и остается только поздно вечером сидеть в „Макдоналдсе“ и не отвечать на телефон»
Может, тебе все же было бы куда и с кем пойти, если бы ты отвечал на телефон?
По этой книге создалось впечатление, что Марк Фишер послушал пару-тройку действительно впечатляющих альбомов, влюбился в "Сияние" Кубрика и Кинга, начитался Деррида и стал вообще все будущие релизы натягивать на не столь обширный глобус своих вкусов и познаний. Везде у него призраки, неолиберализм, рассуждения о сексуальности и маскулинности того или иного жанра. Все это выглядит ограниченным и утомительным. Хотя, где-то к середине ты уже играешь сам с собой в игру "на выпивание" — а как сейчас Марк Фишер приплетет политику. И ведь приплетает, стервец.
Ничего нового книга мне не дала, но заставила переслушать дебютник Трики и альбом so this is goodbye Джуниор Бойс. Было приятно натыкаться на знакомые имена. А еще у книги был шарящий редактор, что выглядит просто божественным вмешательством.
И, самое занятное, Марк Фишер подтвердил, что у Burial нытье ради нытья:
«Мои новые треки об этом, – подтверждает Burial. – О том, как хочется иметь ангела-хранителя, когда тебе некуда пойти и остается только поздно вечером сидеть в „Макдоналдсе“ и не отвечать на телефон»
Может, тебе все же было бы куда и с кем пойти, если бы ты отвечал на телефон?
December 16, 2017
A collection of essays on the "lost futures" of popular culture in the face of neoliberalism and capitalist realism. Not being a pop culture aficionado like Fisher, a lot of the music history went over my head. I learned more about the underground British experimental hip hop scene of the 1990s than I cared to know. It is a very personal work; the essays rely heavily on Fisher's own experiences of the pop culture phenomena he encountered, and so the connections he draws between pop culture and the "slow cancellation of the future" under capitalist absolutism are often tenuous, though not easy to discount outright.
The book has the distinction of introducing me to Tricky's Maxinquaye, which is a fantastic trip hop album. If you're curious about something mainstream hip hop could have been but wasn't, give it a listen.
The book has the distinction of introducing me to Tricky's Maxinquaye, which is a fantastic trip hop album. If you're curious about something mainstream hip hop could have been but wasn't, give it a listen.
September 23, 2017
A powerful book and worth the time to read it. But it does feature essays that are too self standing for my liking. However there are resonant sentences about time, space and nostalgia to render the book of value.
If you are interested in time and nostalgia, there are resonate sentences of value. Enjoy them.
If you are interested in time and nostalgia, there are resonate sentences of value. Enjoy them.
March 2, 2020
Ogni volta che leggi Fisher ne vieni posseduto; è un bene ma anche un male.
C'è, oltre il tempo distrutto, ogni lettore e ogni attimo vissuto e ripetuto da Fisher qui dentro.
C'è, oltre il tempo distrutto, ogni lettore e ogni attimo vissuto e ripetuto da Fisher qui dentro.
July 28, 2019
In poco più di un anno, è stata tradotto il grosso della pubblicazione di Mark Fisher. Dato che con "Spettri della mia vita" rimane più poco da pubblicare (uno scritto sul post-punk e una raccolta postuma), questo può essere un buon momento per parlare a tutto tondo del suo pensiero - anche perché, comunque, il suo lavoro è così strettamente interconnesso che difficilmente è comprensibile preso a sé stante.
Fisher, in "Realismo capitalista", forse il suo scritto più cupo, parte da una costatazione che, da lì in poi, sarà il panorama in cui tutte le sue riflessioni si muoveranno: "la sensazione diffusa che non solo il capitalismo sia l'unico sistema politico ed economico oggi percorribile, ma che sia impossibile anche immaginare un'alternativa coerente". Il There is no alternative della Thatcher, su cui Fisher torna ossessivamente per tutto il testo, è la pistola fumante con cui l'ideologia neoliberista è riuscita a imporsi come unica visione della realtà. E' più facile immaginare la fine del mondo, che la fine del capitalismo, a un certo punto afferma Fisher - affermazione così fondamentale da essere ripresa anche in "Spettri della mia vita". Il Realismo Capitalista è, quindi, la narrazione dominante che si è fatta egemone, così egemone da riuscire a far credere che la narrazione sia la realtà, che la carta sia il territorio.
Se, "Realismo Capitalista" può essere considerato il punto zero della riflessione di Fisher, in "The Weird and the eerie", ma soprattutto in "Spettri della mia vita", Fisher la amplia e va oltre il semplice, seppur necessario, j'accuse verso il Capitale. "Spettri della mia vita" è una raccolta di saggi usciti precedentemente su diverse riviste e specialmente sul blog culturale che teneva Fisher. Ogni capitolo è dedicato all'opera di un artista musicale (qualche rara volta a un film), e sono riuniti lavorando più sull'assonanza, sulla comunanza ideologica, più che su una strutturazione sistematica del pensiero di Fisher. Anche perché, comunque, il pensiero di Fisher, nella sua radicalità e importanza, è piuttosto chiaro: "il ventunesimo secolo è oppresso da un soffocante senso di finitezza e sfinimento. Non si ha affatto l'impressione di trovarsi nel futuro. [...] Siamo ancora intrappolati nel ventesimo secolo". L'effetto principale del Realismo Capitalista, ovvero dell'imposizione di questa para-realtà da parte del Capitale nel corso del ventennio '70 - '80, ha di fatto cancellato il futuro. Ha mandato fuor di sesto il tempo. "Spettri della mia vita" è una raccolta che è ossessionata dal tempo e dal suo scorrere/avvolgersi. In particolare, sono due i termini che si affacciano per tutti i saggi, più o meno implicitamente: nostalgia e hauntologia.
Fisher identifica la modalità nostalgica che caratterizza la narrazione capitalistica come "un'adesione formale alle tecniche e alle formule del passato, una conseguenza della rinuncia alla sfida modernista di innovare le forme culturali adeguandole all'esperienza contemporanea". Il capitolo dedicato alla nostalgia parla di "Life on Mars", serie tv inglese ambientata negli anni '70. Ma, siccome ora (ormai da un po') la nostalgia si è spostata agli anni '80, basta sostituire, che so, "Stranger Things" a "Life on Mars" e risulta immediatamente comprensibile l'iconocizzazione del passato di cui parla Fisher: "appena la macchina da presa li inquadra, la carta da parati kitsch e i pantaloni a zampa d'elefante si trasformano in citazioni stilistiche". La narrazione pop contemporanea, incapace sia di rappresentare il presente sia di riuscire a immaginare un futuro - che, a questo punto, possiamo sempre e solo immaginare come accelerazionistico, ultra-tecnologico, ultra-capitalistico - si rifugia nel passato, o meglio, in un'idea glamour del passato.
L'opposto della nostalgia fasulla è l'hauntologia. Hauntologia è un termine coniato da Deridda e che con Fisher e Simon Reynolds si è imposta sempre più come categoria di lettura e interpretazione prima di un certo tipo di musica e poi della realtà stessa. L'hauntologia "sembra avere a che fare con il dolore seducente di un futuro appena fuori dalla nostra portata. [...] è ossessionato da ciò che c'era una volta, che avrebbe potuto esserci, e che - più cupamente - potrebbe ancora succedere". To haunt in inglese vuol dire infestare, ma gli spettri, in questo caso, non sono soltanto il passato che non scompare, ma anche il futuro che non si è avverato. In particolare, Fisher indica come anno fondamentale la fine degli anni '70. Caratterizzati dal welfare state e da quello che definisce un modernismo popolare (in pratica prodotti culturali sperimentali sovvenzionati dallo stato con l'idea di essere diffusi in massa), sono crollati con l'avvento del Thatcherismo e della Terza Via blairiana poi. Quello che sembrava avviarsi verso un futuro di modernizzazione e sperimentazione, si è avvitato su se stesso: il futuro è letteralmente morto. Ora, piccolo inciso, quella che potrebbe degenerare in nostalgia verso i vecchi tempi andati è accuratamente evitata da Fisher ricordandoci quanto comunque fossero tempi bui a livello di uguaglianza di genere e razziale e così via. Un'opera come Red Riding - romanzi neo-noir ambientati negli anni '70 e '80 - ha proprio lo scopo di ricordarci che "l'oggetto del desiderio dell'hauntologia non è un particolare periodo, ma il recupero dei processi di democratizzazione e pluralismo [...] Ciò che dovrebbe ossessionarci non è il non più della socialdemocrazia reale, ma il non ancora dei vari futuri che il modernismo popolare ci ha preparato ad attendere e che non si è mai materializzato".
Fisher, oltre che un teorico, è anche un critico culturale, soprattutto musicale. La sua lettura della realtà è imprescindibile dalla sua analisi di film, album e libri. In lui, analisi critica e analisi sociale si alimentano a vicenda, e molto spesso non si riesce bene a capire quale delle due origini l'altra. Per comprendere l'hauntologia può essere utile infatti guardare alle due categorie che Fisher utilizza per aggiornare il perturbante freudiano: il weird, lo strano, e soprattutto l'eerie, l'inquietante. Il weird è l'esterno che irrompe nella sfera dell'interno. Le creature di Lovercraft, un viaggiatore del tempo, così via. Insomma, il weird è tutto ciò che esiste quando non dovrebbe esistere. L'eerie, invece, è il fallimento di un'assenza o di una presenza: qualcosa che ci sarebbe dovuto essere/non essere e invece è il contrario. L'eerie è facilmente identificabile proprio con quella nostalgia per i futuri mai verificatisi che, come spettri, infestano la nostra realtà. Ma d'altronde anche il weird, in fondo, ne è una versione. Per Fisher, insomma, l'hauntologia può essere vista, forse, come una specie di declinazione del weird e dell'eerie.
L'importanza dell'hauntologia è che un'apertura verso l'esterno, intesa come spettro o come squarcio che permette di guardare fuori. Immersi come siamo nella narrazione del Realismo Capitalista l'hauntologia allora è come una terapia d'urto, come una rottura con l'ambiente rassicurante e anestetizzante, che ci circonda e che ci è imposto dal Capitale. Privati del futuro, di ogni futuro, l'hauntologia, con la sua cifra stilistica fatta di suoni che sembrano provenire dal passato - ma a questo punto anche con il weird e l'eerie in generale - "rappresenta un rifiuto di rinunciare al desiderio di futuro. Tale rifiuto conferisce alla melanconia una dimensione politica, perché equivale alla rinuncia ad adattarsi agli orizzonti limitati del realismo capitalista". L'hauntologia non è rassicurante, tutt'altro. E' un passato che rifiutiamo di far morire, che ci torna ad ossessionare, a infestare il nostro presente. In uno dei saggi, Fisher utilizza l'hauntologia per parlarci di legami famigliari e di come saremo sempre infestati dai nostri padri e di come infesteremo i nostri figli. Eppure, l'hauntologia è la risposta che Fisher oppone al Realismo Capitalista e alla sua nostalgia formale: "consiste nel rifiuto di adattarsi a ciò che le condizioni attuali definiscono - anche se il prezzo di tale rifiuto finisce per farti sentire un reietto nella tua stessa epoca".
Fisher, in "Realismo capitalista", forse il suo scritto più cupo, parte da una costatazione che, da lì in poi, sarà il panorama in cui tutte le sue riflessioni si muoveranno: "la sensazione diffusa che non solo il capitalismo sia l'unico sistema politico ed economico oggi percorribile, ma che sia impossibile anche immaginare un'alternativa coerente". Il There is no alternative della Thatcher, su cui Fisher torna ossessivamente per tutto il testo, è la pistola fumante con cui l'ideologia neoliberista è riuscita a imporsi come unica visione della realtà. E' più facile immaginare la fine del mondo, che la fine del capitalismo, a un certo punto afferma Fisher - affermazione così fondamentale da essere ripresa anche in "Spettri della mia vita". Il Realismo Capitalista è, quindi, la narrazione dominante che si è fatta egemone, così egemone da riuscire a far credere che la narrazione sia la realtà, che la carta sia il territorio.
Se, "Realismo Capitalista" può essere considerato il punto zero della riflessione di Fisher, in "The Weird and the eerie", ma soprattutto in "Spettri della mia vita", Fisher la amplia e va oltre il semplice, seppur necessario, j'accuse verso il Capitale. "Spettri della mia vita" è una raccolta di saggi usciti precedentemente su diverse riviste e specialmente sul blog culturale che teneva Fisher. Ogni capitolo è dedicato all'opera di un artista musicale (qualche rara volta a un film), e sono riuniti lavorando più sull'assonanza, sulla comunanza ideologica, più che su una strutturazione sistematica del pensiero di Fisher. Anche perché, comunque, il pensiero di Fisher, nella sua radicalità e importanza, è piuttosto chiaro: "il ventunesimo secolo è oppresso da un soffocante senso di finitezza e sfinimento. Non si ha affatto l'impressione di trovarsi nel futuro. [...] Siamo ancora intrappolati nel ventesimo secolo". L'effetto principale del Realismo Capitalista, ovvero dell'imposizione di questa para-realtà da parte del Capitale nel corso del ventennio '70 - '80, ha di fatto cancellato il futuro. Ha mandato fuor di sesto il tempo. "Spettri della mia vita" è una raccolta che è ossessionata dal tempo e dal suo scorrere/avvolgersi. In particolare, sono due i termini che si affacciano per tutti i saggi, più o meno implicitamente: nostalgia e hauntologia.
Fisher identifica la modalità nostalgica che caratterizza la narrazione capitalistica come "un'adesione formale alle tecniche e alle formule del passato, una conseguenza della rinuncia alla sfida modernista di innovare le forme culturali adeguandole all'esperienza contemporanea". Il capitolo dedicato alla nostalgia parla di "Life on Mars", serie tv inglese ambientata negli anni '70. Ma, siccome ora (ormai da un po') la nostalgia si è spostata agli anni '80, basta sostituire, che so, "Stranger Things" a "Life on Mars" e risulta immediatamente comprensibile l'iconocizzazione del passato di cui parla Fisher: "appena la macchina da presa li inquadra, la carta da parati kitsch e i pantaloni a zampa d'elefante si trasformano in citazioni stilistiche". La narrazione pop contemporanea, incapace sia di rappresentare il presente sia di riuscire a immaginare un futuro - che, a questo punto, possiamo sempre e solo immaginare come accelerazionistico, ultra-tecnologico, ultra-capitalistico - si rifugia nel passato, o meglio, in un'idea glamour del passato.
L'opposto della nostalgia fasulla è l'hauntologia. Hauntologia è un termine coniato da Deridda e che con Fisher e Simon Reynolds si è imposta sempre più come categoria di lettura e interpretazione prima di un certo tipo di musica e poi della realtà stessa. L'hauntologia "sembra avere a che fare con il dolore seducente di un futuro appena fuori dalla nostra portata. [...] è ossessionato da ciò che c'era una volta, che avrebbe potuto esserci, e che - più cupamente - potrebbe ancora succedere". To haunt in inglese vuol dire infestare, ma gli spettri, in questo caso, non sono soltanto il passato che non scompare, ma anche il futuro che non si è avverato. In particolare, Fisher indica come anno fondamentale la fine degli anni '70. Caratterizzati dal welfare state e da quello che definisce un modernismo popolare (in pratica prodotti culturali sperimentali sovvenzionati dallo stato con l'idea di essere diffusi in massa), sono crollati con l'avvento del Thatcherismo e della Terza Via blairiana poi. Quello che sembrava avviarsi verso un futuro di modernizzazione e sperimentazione, si è avvitato su se stesso: il futuro è letteralmente morto. Ora, piccolo inciso, quella che potrebbe degenerare in nostalgia verso i vecchi tempi andati è accuratamente evitata da Fisher ricordandoci quanto comunque fossero tempi bui a livello di uguaglianza di genere e razziale e così via. Un'opera come Red Riding - romanzi neo-noir ambientati negli anni '70 e '80 - ha proprio lo scopo di ricordarci che "l'oggetto del desiderio dell'hauntologia non è un particolare periodo, ma il recupero dei processi di democratizzazione e pluralismo [...] Ciò che dovrebbe ossessionarci non è il non più della socialdemocrazia reale, ma il non ancora dei vari futuri che il modernismo popolare ci ha preparato ad attendere e che non si è mai materializzato".
Fisher, oltre che un teorico, è anche un critico culturale, soprattutto musicale. La sua lettura della realtà è imprescindibile dalla sua analisi di film, album e libri. In lui, analisi critica e analisi sociale si alimentano a vicenda, e molto spesso non si riesce bene a capire quale delle due origini l'altra. Per comprendere l'hauntologia può essere utile infatti guardare alle due categorie che Fisher utilizza per aggiornare il perturbante freudiano: il weird, lo strano, e soprattutto l'eerie, l'inquietante. Il weird è l'esterno che irrompe nella sfera dell'interno. Le creature di Lovercraft, un viaggiatore del tempo, così via. Insomma, il weird è tutto ciò che esiste quando non dovrebbe esistere. L'eerie, invece, è il fallimento di un'assenza o di una presenza: qualcosa che ci sarebbe dovuto essere/non essere e invece è il contrario. L'eerie è facilmente identificabile proprio con quella nostalgia per i futuri mai verificatisi che, come spettri, infestano la nostra realtà. Ma d'altronde anche il weird, in fondo, ne è una versione. Per Fisher, insomma, l'hauntologia può essere vista, forse, come una specie di declinazione del weird e dell'eerie.
L'importanza dell'hauntologia è che un'apertura verso l'esterno, intesa come spettro o come squarcio che permette di guardare fuori. Immersi come siamo nella narrazione del Realismo Capitalista l'hauntologia allora è come una terapia d'urto, come una rottura con l'ambiente rassicurante e anestetizzante, che ci circonda e che ci è imposto dal Capitale. Privati del futuro, di ogni futuro, l'hauntologia, con la sua cifra stilistica fatta di suoni che sembrano provenire dal passato - ma a questo punto anche con il weird e l'eerie in generale - "rappresenta un rifiuto di rinunciare al desiderio di futuro. Tale rifiuto conferisce alla melanconia una dimensione politica, perché equivale alla rinuncia ad adattarsi agli orizzonti limitati del realismo capitalista". L'hauntologia non è rassicurante, tutt'altro. E' un passato che rifiutiamo di far morire, che ci torna ad ossessionare, a infestare il nostro presente. In uno dei saggi, Fisher utilizza l'hauntologia per parlarci di legami famigliari e di come saremo sempre infestati dai nostri padri e di come infesteremo i nostri figli. Eppure, l'hauntologia è la risposta che Fisher oppone al Realismo Capitalista e alla sua nostalgia formale: "consiste nel rifiuto di adattarsi a ciò che le condizioni attuali definiscono - anche se il prezzo di tale rifiuto finisce per farti sentire un reietto nella tua stessa epoca".
June 12, 2025
вся книга ровно про мощный хуесосинг современной культуры как тупых повторений + очень красивые эссе о хорошей музыке. в последнее время особенно потеплела к знаковому инди-музлу десятых, потому что оно строило очень красивую (надломленную, с намёками на хоррор) утопию и реально с любовью перерабатывало прошлое. а от двадцатых наоборот ощущение потерянной надежды, утопии нет, ничего нет, полная остановка культуры при совсем не остановившейся истории, бесконечное воспроизводство, функционализация музыки (теперь всё это саундтрек, а значит фоновое или написанное для тиктоков). вот не знаю, грустить или радоваться, что фишер до gen-AI не дожил, с одной стороны, интересно, что он про это думал бы, с другой — я уверена, что ему бы сильно не понравилось, братан вовремя свалил в лучшие миры
May 2, 2023
A picturesque exploration of the malaise of modern living.
4.5/5
4.5/5
December 12, 2020
I wish I could hear with Mark Fisher's ears--not because I necessarily feel I'm missing anything; in fact, the way Fisher wrote about music feels the closest anyone could come to actually experiencing music for oneself. Rather, I wish I could heard the music Fisher so dearly loved in the way he did, because his writing makes me wish I could get down with any number of artists he name-checks in this collection whose music has never actually done anything for me. Fisher had an incredible skill at connecting the media he encountered (particularly jungle music, Joy Division, The Caretaker and Burial) with his personal philosophical musings on cyberpunk and digital nostalgia in a way that feels uniquely cosmic; artists and events from dubstep producers to the trial of Jimmy Savile end up connected in a grand web of 21st-century-dom as if there really was a spiraling, chaotic narrative guiding the course of world history. It's a trick Simon Sellars used in his stellar Applied Ballardianism, albeit with some generous fictional liberties. Where Fisher really shines is his ability to find the connections, however tenuous they may seem at the outset, between events, people and subcultures that provide the fabric for the history of counterculture in the first decade of the 2000s, particularly in the UK. I only wish our tastes had a little more in common, because just about every artist he venerates in this collection bores me to tears.
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